A Utah genetic lab’s monopoly on testing for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer is being challenged by researchers at the Yale Cancer Center and other institutions that say it’s preventing other screenings that could save lives. The Connecticut news site, C-HIT.org (Connecticut Health Investigative Team) has just posted an important story about the actions swirling […]
CTMirror Contributor
Posted inEnergy & Environment
YouTube video illustrates difference between climate and weather
Always wondered? Here’s an explanation so simple we can all grasp it. http://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/science-made-easy-climate-versus-weather/
Posted inEnergy & Environment, Money
“Today in Green IT: The fossil fuel subsidy game”
One often hears cries of “foul” when the possibility of government support for energy renewal efforts and industries is raised. Here’s a rebuttal, in an essay that explores the many, many ways in which fossil fuel industries have been historically subsidized. Not enough to change a point of view, perhaps, but an interesting thing to […]
Posted inHealth
“Boston’s Brain Drain: The Cost of Being America’s Drunkest City”
I know of few families who have not been touched, even scarred by alcoholism. But that’s not even the point of this short commentary by Ford Vox, identified as a brain injury physician and journalist based in Boston. This depressing piece — infuriating may be a more accurate description — in the Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/01/bostons-brain-drain-the-cost-of-being-americas-drunkest-city/250727/ — outlines […]
Posted inHealth
‘Love and Autism’
In an ongoing series, “Autism, Grown Up,” New York Times writer Amy Harmon, in the Sunday paper, has a story that plunges into all the messiness of a new relationship, but among two young adults with Asperger syndrome. View “Navigating Love and Autism,” here. It’s writerly, filled with story arcs and nuance. And it throws […]
Posted inHealth
Of drugs and hard times
There’s a powerful piece in the New York Times today in a series called, “Lives Restored.” This, “After Drugs and Dark Times, Helping Others to Stand Back Up,” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/health/20lives.html?_r=1&hp about a 41-year-old Delaware man’s struggles with addiction and mental illness. Yes, yes, you’ve read (or pointedly not read) dozens of these types of stories before. […]
Posted inMoney
Sweating Bullets — Body Scanners May See Perspiration as a Potential Weapon
The folks at ProPublica.org, the online investigative news website, have looked into the high number of false positive readings being made by a type of airport scanner. http://www.propublica.org/article/sweating-bullets-body-scanners-can-see-perspiration-as-a-potential-weapon The millimeter-wave machines are considered safer than the X-ray body scanners, which are also widely used at airports. Unlike X-rays, however, the low-level electromagnetic waves are not linked to […]
Posted inEnergy & Environment
More warnings on the Arctic and climate change
A University of Florida ecologist, Edward Schuur, writes, in an article in the journal Nature that the key to this new, troubling information is permafrost — or frozen soil — which covers nearly 12 million square miles of land in the great north. Schuur argues that previous climate change models have underestimated the effect of […]
Posted inEducation, Health
School Arrests Bring New Scrutiny, Reforms
Hundreds of children in Connecticut schools are being arrested for behavior that, in an earlier time, most likely led to them being sent to the principal’s office. A story by the Connecticut Health Investigative Team — at c-hit.org — reports that data collected by the state’s judicial department show that more than 700 arrests were […]
Posted inMoney
Is America Working?
The Financial Times, out of London, starts a series today, “Is America Working?” that examines “the US jobs crisis” http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6327a7f4-21bb-11e1-8b93-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1gKGPta9C . This first part may not break any new ground for those whose job it is to study what’s happening under our collective noses, but it can often be helpful to see things from more of […]
Posted inNews
Four hospitals face possible Medicare penalities
Patients are being readmitted within 30 days to four hospitals in Connecticut at higher than national rates after they have suffered from pneumonia, heart failure and heart attacks. As a result, those hospitals are facing Medicare penalties in 2012. A report by the Connecticut Health Investigative Team (C-HIT.org) http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/health/entry/hospitals_to_face_penalties_for_high_readmissions/ reveals that two of those hospitals, […]
Posted inHealth
Lipitor — A legend in its own time
As of this week, consumers can get a generic version of Lipitor, the best-selling drug developed by Pfizer. Heralding this fact, in the mainstream press as well as in the business press, are the kinds of praises and exultations one usually hears only on Oscar night. Forbes.com’s Avik Roy, in his blog (The Apothecary) […]
Posted inMoney
We lose boasting rights in this (green) category
Thanks to Talking Points Memo’s IdeaLab for pointing us to NPR.org, which has done a cool map tracking how various parts of the country rate in terms of buying hybrid and electric vehicles http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/11/where-do-hybrid-electric-cars-sell-best.php. The San Francisco area (wow, who would have imagined?) that beats out all others in this category: 8.4 percent of […]
Posted inMoney
We lose boasting rights in this (green) category
Thanks to Talking Points Memo’s IdeaLab for pointing us to NPR.org, which has done a cool map tracking how various parts of the country rate in terms of buying hybrid and electric vehicles http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/11/where-do-hybrid-electric-cars-sell-best.php. The San Francisco area (wow, who would have imagined?) that beats out all others in this category: 8.4 percent of […]